Islamic extremist group al Shabab, a violent offshoot of the Islamic Courts Union that once attempted to govern Somalia, has staged a series of guerrilla attacks in the last week. In Kenya, they struck a troop of non-Muslim actors trying to bring awareness of a new program to provide textbooks to regional schools. Twelve of the actors were killed in an attack that featured grenades and homemade explosives, finished off by militants with guns who stormed the building and murdered the wounded.

The attack is part of a campaign to drive non-Muslims, and especially Christians, from educational facilities in the region. In this it is similar to Boko Haram, another African Islamist group that targets educators and schools in an attempt to control the minds of the youth. Though the claim is that Western education is a kind of propaganda, Western mathematics and medicine are being denied to the people of these regions in an attempt to make sure that they learn nothing that might cause them to question the conservative interpretations of Islam favored by these militants. Though they are quite similar in this way, the two groups are not formally aligned. Boko Haram is allied with the Islamic State (ISIS), whereas al Shabab’s affiliation is with al Qaeda.

Separately, yesterday another group of Shabab militants attacked an African Union (AU) military base hosting troops from Djibouti. The complex attack featured a truck bomb followed by coordinated small arms fire. The military forces claim that they not only repelled the attack, but killed all members of the attacking force. Shabab’s spokesmen say that the attack was a reprisal for massacres allegedly conducted by the AU forces. Djibouti is an American ally, hosting Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa at Camp Lemonnier, an old French Foreign Legion base that is currently the only permanent base for US forces in Africa.

In addition to this, al Shabab captured a city in Somalia in the last week. Allied Ethiopian forces fled before them, leaving them to occupy the city of Halgan. However, this is the third time this month that the militants have captured that city. So far the Somali government has managed to put together enough of its own or allied forces to retake the city. The Ethiopian forces built trenches and fortifications, but appear to have elected to destroy them and flee rather than use them to stand and fight against the Islamists. While this does at least deny al Shabab the benefit of the fortifications, it is unclear why these professional soldiers would not or could not hold their posts against guerrilla forces from a dug-in position.

Early this month al Shabab even managed a car bomb attack on a restaurant in the capital city of Mogadishu.

Al-Qaeda (AQ) and the Islamic State in Iraq and (Greater) Syria (ISIS) have troubling potentials to withstand recent significant defeats and conduct long-term jihad campaigns, particularly absent any political stabilization greater Mesopotamia. So analyzed policy experts before an audience of about 60 at the Hudson Institute’s September 13 panel “ISIS: On the Verge of Defeat or Transforming Itself for the Long Haul?” in Washington, DC.

Hudson Institute Adjunct Fellow Michael Pregent noted that ISIS is “quickly learning, if you don’t have the ability to shoot down an American aircraft, you shouldn’t plant a black flag, because you are likely to lose territory.” If ISIS’ ambition to maintain a caliphate state within a certain territory became untenable, ISIS could then emulate AQ as a covert jihadist terrorist organization. Foreign Policy Research Institute Senior Fellow Nada Bakos stated that ISIS has “already metamorphosed into another type of organization where they are inciting and directing attacks outside the territory they control.”

ISIS’ caliphate currently crumbling in the face of conventional military assault appeared to validate the strategy of AQ, a jihadist group “in this for the long haul” and “still there as a long-term threat” for the West, Bokos stated. AQ “is still very focused on the West and the United States. They are still very focused on various stages before they get to a caliphate” while ISIS “jumped about six of those steps.” AQ founder Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al Zawahiri evinced such a strategy in AQ documents recovered during the May 1, 2011, killing of bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The AQ leaders had argued “don’t establish a caliphate until you can pay everybody in the caliphate and you can give them a job and you can feed them,” Pregent noted.

In an “obvious competition between the two organizations,” AQ “has a much more sophisticated and coherent ideology” and a “much more sophisticated structure” than ISIS, Bokos noted. Pregent noted that AQ’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, was much more selective in recruitment than ISIS, placing higher ideological and military training demands upon inductees. Similarly, Zawahiri had previously advocated making Nigeria’s Boko Haram jihadist group, currently an ISIS affiliate, an AQ affiliate, but met opposition from bin Laden, who distrusted Boko Haram’s discipline and qualifications.

Bokos suggested that AQ could eventually absorb an ISIS bereft of its caliphate territory and lacking AQ’s covert expertise. Although tempted to go covert, ISIS’ “central effort is still holding the caliphate together. That is what they centered and built this whole organization around. They lose face if they lose that territory.” Yet extortion, now a leading ISIS revenue source, alienates ISIS’ subject population of Sunni Muslims, recalling a similar alienation under ISIS’ predecessor, Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Pregent noted speculation that bin Laden had tolerated lax communication security with AQI’s leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in order to allow his 2006 killing by American troops in Iraq given his refusal to heed bin Laden’s opposition to AQI’s brutality.

Nonetheless, Pregent worried that current strategy against ISIS affiliates from Libya to Iraq is “simply resetting the conditions that led to ISIS to begin with” and allowing for a future iteration of the organization. Anti-ISIS coalition nations are “willing to commit an air force, commit a fighter jet, maybe commit some special operators on the ground, some snipers, but the default has been to use a proxy force.” Often distrusted by local Sunnis, such proxies “depopulate a Sunni area that ISIS controls, disperse ISIS, replace the ISIS flag with an Iraqi flag, a Syrian flag, a Libyan flag, whatever flag that may be,” then “call it a PR event.” Yet in Iraq ISIS cells have continued to operate in towns taken from ISIS such as Fallujah, Ramadi, and Tikrit, while ISIS attacks have plagued Iraq’s capital Baghdad itself.

Considering Iraq’s Shiite militias and Shiite-dominated central government, both supported by Iran, the “last thing the United States should do is provide air cover to Iranian Shia proxies as they take back these towns from ISIS,” Pregent stated. Northwestern Iraq’s “Sunni population is more distrustful than ever of Baghdad, now more distrustful of us” after the United States’ 2011 Iraq troop withdrawal left Iraqi Sunnis alone amidst sectarian repression under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Continuing Shiite-Sunni animosity therefore provides fertile soil for ISIS to reestablish itself as a defender of Sunnis, meaning that after ISIS’ impending loss of Mosul “June 2017 will be June 2014 all over again,” he fears.

Pregent’s alternative strategy is an “intelligence-driven operation where we decapitate ISIS key leaders, bring in Sunni recruits, put pressure on Baghdad to basically bring back the US-trained Sunnis that Malik purged” from Iraqi security forces. While the CIA has estimated that ISIS has 8,000 fighters, most of them foreigners, 350,000 military-age Sunni males in Mosul have not joined ISIS, allowing for an operation in which “Mosul turns on ISIS.” Beyond Mosul, Iraq’s lasting pacification requires getting “Baghdad to be a government Sunnis trust” while Bokos noted the need to replace Jabhat al-Nusra’s provision of municipal services, a key element of its popularity among Sunnis.

Pregent’s strategy necessitated renewed American leverage in Iraq’s region, something desired by many Sunni refugees he had met in camps in Iraq and Turkey. Yet Sunni tribes who had helped defeat AQI during the Iraq War’s Anbar Awakening were weary of renewed alliance with America after facing both Baghdad’s repression and retaliation from AQI members who later joined ISIS. “Our strategy is based on hope, and the tribal strategy is based on pragmatism,” he noted, while Bokos warned that ISIS had co-opted many Sunnis who once served Iraqi security forces.

Lack of a political settlement in Iraq would only give rise to future, greater dangers, Pregent worried. The fall of ISIS’ caliphate would lead to an ISIS “2.0, Al Qaeda version, in the interim.” Then “ISIS 3.0 comes back with an ability to shoot down an American aircraft.”

Andrew E. Harrod is a researcher and writer who holds a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a JD from George Washington University Law School. He is a fellow with the Lawfare Project, an organization combating the misuse of human rights law against Western societies. He can be followed on twitter at @AEHarrod.

Did the State Department use Boko Haram to subvert Nigeria’s presidential election out of Obama administration policy, or because of the mass donations to the Clinton Foundation from a Nigerian oil billionaire?

World News has an important story about the State Department’s meddling in Nigeria’s presidential elections using the tool of Boko Haram violence. C-SPAN has a further interview with the author of that piece here. Yet there is still an important question to be asked: was the meddling in Nigeria’s Presidential election merely an Obama administration decision to effect regime change by subverting a free election, or was it in service to a major Clinton Foundation donor from the Nigerian oil fields?

Evidence that Obama intended to subvert the election is strong. Obama’s own former chief strategist for his Presidential campaigns, David Axelrod, had his consulting firmAKPD was brought in to run Presidential competitor Buhari’s campaign. The campaign was largely based on allegations of then-President Goodluck Jonathan’s corruption, and inability to fight Boko Haram successfully. Of course, President Obama as Commander in Chief had the ability to support Nigeria with American forces, and President Jonathan had been begging for such forces to come to his aid. Indeed, Jonathan ultimately accomplished a significant military victory just a few weeks before the election with the use of South African private military contractors providing training, advice, and helicopter transport. These were all things denied to the Nigerians by the State Department. And almost immediately upon Buhari’s victory, the Obama administration announced it was open to expanding cooperation to fight Boko Haram.

This suggests that had the State Department not opposed the designation and blocked counter terrorism cooperation, Boko Haram could have been militarily suppressed during the Jonathan Administration. Combined with the aid given to the political opposition by the President’s own political operatives, the picture is one of a democratic election intentionally subverted by allowing a terrorist organization to flourish until the election could be won.

But there may be more to the story. From 2009 through 2013, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had refused to designate Boko Haram as an official Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in spite of intense bipartisan pressure to do so. Why? Both Citizens United and Senator David Vitter have sought FOIA releases of documents explaining State’s thought process at this time. However, there is a major Clinton Foundation donor who had a clear interest: a Nigerian oilfield billionaire named Gilbert Chagoury.

Gilbert Chagoury has substantial oil exploration interests in Nigeria. He also pledged $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) in 2009, the same year Hilary Clinton took office as Secretary of State. Gilbert Chagoury is part of a small Nigerian clique that includes President Muhamadu Buhari. He was interested in seeing Buhari elected, and is reportedly the one who pushed for Axelrod’s firm to be brought in.

It would have been in the business interests of Chagoury, and Buhari to keep former president Goodluck Jonathan from initiating oil ventures in northern Nigeria until Buhari was able to secure the presidency. That would make sure that the contracts got into the right hands.

Meanwhile, Boko Haram often showed up better equipped than the Nigerian military: “Boko Haram was extorting even government officials in the north, state and local officials, and certainly the military,” said an American working in the area for more than a decade, who spoke to WORLD and is not named for security reasons. “Very wealthy Muslim businessmen totally have been backing Boko Haram. There was huge money involved. Money used to purchase arms—it was crazy.”

Where were the funds and support coming from? In part from a corrupt oil industry and political leaders in the North acting as quasi-warlords. But prominently in the mix are Nigerian billionaires with criminal pasts—plus ties to Clinton political campaigns and the Clinton Foundation, the controversial charity established by Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton in 1997.

The Clintons’ long association with top suspect tycoons—and their refusal to answer questions about those associations—takes on greater significance considering the dramatic rise of Boko Haram violence while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. Did some Clinton donors stand to gain from the State Department not taking action against the Islamic terrorist group?…

Critics argue it was Clinton herself who has led the way on U.S. indifference, spurning the standard FTO designation (issued 72 times since 1997) that could have bolstered U.S. efforts against Boko Haram years before the infamous [“#BringBackOurGirls”] kidnappings. [Emphasis added.]

Both Clinton and the Obamas made a big noise about those kidnapped girls. They didn’t actually do anything to help them, though. Perhaps now we begin to see why they did not.

On a visit to Nigeria today, Secretary of State John Kerry declared there are “far too many” who join terrorist groups like Boko Haram “because they have trouble finding meaning or opportunity in their daily lives.”

“Because they are deeply frustrated and alienated — and because they hope groups like Boko Haram will somehow give them a sense of identity, or purpose, or power,” Kerry said after meeting with local religious leaders to discuss community building and countering violent extremism in Sokoto, Nigeria.

“We see this in every part of the world — whether we are talking about the Lake Chad Basin or the Sahel, or a village in the Middle East or a city in Western Europe, it’s the same. When people — and particularly young people — have no hope for the future and no faith in legitimate authority — when there are no outlets for people to express their concerns — then aggravation festers and those people become vulnerable to outside influence,” he added. “And no one knows that better than the violent extremist groups, which regularly use humiliation and marginalization and inequality and poverty and corruption as recruitment tools.”

Kerry stressed that “one of our central tasks — and almost every single religious leader I just heard in the other room talked about this task — has to be to remove the vulnerabilities in our own position.”

“To effectively counter violent extremism, we have to ensure that military action is coupled with a reinforced commitment to the values this region and all of Nigeria has a long legacy of supporting — values like integrity, good governance, education, compassion, security, and respect for human rights,” he said.

The Obama administration has been critical of Nigeria’s military campaign against Boko Haram, charging that human rights are being violated as they target suspected terrorists.

“It is understandable that in the wake of terrorist activity, some people are tempted to crack down on everyone and anyone who could theoretically pose some sort of a threat. I caution against that today,” Kerry said. “Extremism cannot be defeated through repression or just creating fear. Fear instilled through repression invites not confidence; it invites contempt. It creates terrorists — trust creates citizens.”

Nigeria is about half Muslim and 40 percent Christian, with indigenous religions making up the balance. Kerry told the Nigerians that “those who would tear our communities apart — pitting one religion or one sect against another — they can only be defeated by citizens’ unyielding commitment to unity and mutual understanding.”

“Equality and tolerance; justice and mercy; compassion and humility — these are values that transcend religions, ethnicities, and all kinds of moral codes,” he said. “They are certainly in keeping with the teachings of Islam that have enriched the world for centuries.”

Kerry’s trip also included a meeting with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari and a sit-down with northern governors.

The Nigerian Army claimed Monday that “believed to have fatally” Boko Harm leader Abubakr Shekau. The army claimed the same back in 2014, only to have Shekau emerge alive and well.

“In what one could describe as the most unprecedented and spectacular air raid, we have just confirmed that as a result of the interdiction efforts of the Nigerian Air Force, some key leaders of the Boko Haram terrorists have been killed while others were fatally wounded,” spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka said in a statement, claiming the terrorists were killed during Friday prayers.

Deaths and injuries from Boko Haram attacks jumped 190 percent in 2015. Over the same period, the Nigeria-based terror group’s use of suicide bombers rose 167 percent. They pledged allegiance to ISIS in 2014.

It has been over two years since almost 300 Nigerian schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram militants in April 2014.

New video released Sunday by Nigerian-based ISIS-affiliate Boko Haram highlights the sad and troubling reality that the insurgency — now the deadliest terror group in the world — is still terrorizing West Africa, with a new focus on targeting Christians.

The video posted Sunday on Twitter shows a young woman, covered in a hijab with just her face showing, who was one of the students abducted from a remote school in northeastern Nigeria in April 2014. She claims that some of her kidnapped classmates died in aerial bombardments by the Nigerian Air Force. She also said that 40 have been “married” to fighters.

The video shows a militant warning in the Hausa language that if President Muhammadu Buhari’s government battles Boko Haram with firepower, the girls won’t be seen again.

“Presently, some of the girls are crippled, some are terribly sick and some of them, as I had said, died during bombardment by the Nigerian military,” the fighter says, appearing before a group of more than 40 young women in hijabs, some holding babies.

The video’s release comes just two weeks after news broke of an internal shakeup in the Boko Haram’s organization’s ranks, in which its long-time leader Abu Bakr Shekau was reportedly replaced by Abu Musab al-Barnawi, who has pledged to re-focus the group’s terror focus on Christians and churches while ending attacks on markets and mosques.

Al-Barnawi, who was confirmed by ISIS’ English language magazine, Dabiq, as the new governor of its so-called West Africa Province — a name that Boko Haram adopted last spring — had been a spokesperson for the group for over a year, speaking in lieu of the mysterious Shekau, leading to speculation of the latter’s death.

Boko Haram’s new announced strategy in West Africa echoes sentiments laid out in the latest issue of Dabiq, in which the multinational insurgency focused attacks directly at Christianity with articles as titled “Break the Cross” and “Why we hate you and why we fight you.”

Elsewhere in Africa, a Ugandan Islamist group hacked at least 64 people to death with machetes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The massacre was carried out by the Allied Defense Forces in the town of Beni, according to a report at the Daily Mail. The ADF is known as a quasi-jihadist militant group initially focused on overthrowing the Ugandan government with the intention of installing Sharia law in the East African country.

As pointed out in a previous two-part series at Conservative Review, the continued violence perpetrated by Boko Haram and the spread of jihadism in other regions is largely a result of President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s failed and reckless Africa policies. These have helped increase the jihadist footprint on the continent.

“We’re on the verge of losing the whole continent of Africa,” to jihadist groups Counterterrorism expert Patrick Poole told Conservative Review in a phone interview for the series.

“Africa is the war on terror,” he added. “If we lose Africa, we lose the war on terror.”

Nate Madden is a Staff Writer for Conservative Review, focusing on religion and culture. He previously served as the Director of Policy Relations for the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative. A Publius Fellow, John Jay Fellow, Citadel Parliamentary Fellow and National Journalism Center alumnus, Nate has previously written for The Washington Times, Catholic News Service, Patheos, and The Christian Post. Follow him @NateMadden_IV.

The terrorist group has claimed more than 20,000 deaths, displaced 2.6 million people from their homes, and kidnapped thousands of children since it started fighting in 2009 for an independent ISIS in Nigeria.

But the kidnapped Chibok girls continue to define the Boko Haram insurgency.

More than two years after their capture in April 2014, the girls remain the symbol of the insurgency — and a political embarrassment to the two Nigerian administrations that have failed to secure their return.

On Sunday, the Chibok girls were back in the spotlight after a Boko Haram video purportedly showing some of them was released, following months of silence and speculation about their fates.

Although it is unclear when the video was shot and if the girls are all from Chibok, experts say its release date is not a coincidence.

Boko Haram is going through a leadership crisis after pledging allegiance to the ISIS in March 2015, with ISIS appearing earlier this month to have appointed Abu Musab al-Barnawi chief of the group.

Abubakar Shekau, Boko Haram’s leader since 2009, could be using the new video to show his control over the Chibok girls, arguably Boko Haram’s biggest asset, said Kyle Shideler of the Washington-based Center for Security Policy.

“The video serves as a message to the Nigerian government that despite being replaced, Shekau still has bargaining chips and will have to be dealt with,” Shideler told news agency AFP.

“It is also a reminder that the group’s largest propaganda success, the Chibok girls kidnapping, occurred under Shekau’s leadership.”

‘Blessing And Curse’

Of the 276 girls kidnapped from the Government Girls Secondary School in the northeastern town of Chibok, 218 are still missing.

Dozens managed to escape in the early hours of the abduction, and one of them was found in May.

The audacity of the mass kidnapping — and the failure of the Nigerian government to find the girls — shocked the world.

Boko Haram catapulted from an obscure regional threat to a high-profile terror group, as politicians and celebrities around the globe posted the #bringbackourgirls hashtag on social media.

The response was “unique”, said Yan St-Pierre, head of the Modern Security Consulting Group in Berlin.

“While other hostages held by terrorists have also caused some media interest — the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in Palestine or the Iran hostage crisis in 1980, for example — it was rather localised,” he said.

“But in the case of the Chibok girls, the media reaction was international.”

The interest in the Chibok girls transformed them into a valuable asset for Boko Haram.

“It is both a blessing, because they were protected a little, and a curse, because they have become Boko Haram’s bargaining chip,” St-Pierre said.

In the new video, Boko Haram demands a prisoner swap of its fighters in exchange for the Chibok girls.

In one of her first acts as Prime Minister Theresa May has announced a major policy on tackling slavery both in the UK and overseas. Mrs May has a longstanding commitment to tackling this issue. A year ago while Home Secretary she introduced a modern slavery bill that established the UK’s first ever Anti-Slavery Commissioner. The new initiative announced this week involves 1. Mrs May personally chairing a new cabinet committee to tackle slavery; 2. Creating a £33 million fund to tackle the enslavement overseas of an estimated 45 million people; 3. Careful monitoring of UK police forces to ensure that they are properly investigating reports of modern day slavery of which there are an estimated 10-13,000 victims in the UK.

Launching the initiative last Sunday Mrs May invoked the anti-slavery campaign two centuries ago led by Christian MP William Wilberforce saying: “This is the great human rights issue of our time and as Prime Minister I am determined that we will make it a national and international mission to rid our world of this barbaric evil. Just as it was Britain that took an historic stand to ban slavery two centuries ago, so Britain will once again lead the way in defeating modern slavery and preserving the freedoms and values that have defined our country for generations.”

We warmly welcome this approach. However, we would respectfully point out to the Prime Minister that it is not just modern slavery that is a problem in the world. We are also seeing a resurgence in older forms of slavery. Much of the slavery Wilberforce fought against began with Arab traders capturing black Africans who were subsequently sold to white slave traders. Crucially it was shari’a that legitimised the enslavement of non-Muslims. The Sokoto Caliphate that encompassed a vast area of West Africa including what is now Northern Nigeria provided a high proportion of those slaves. It is precisely because shari’a permitted slavery that the last countries in the world to formally abolish slavery were predominantly Islamic ones: Morocco (1922), Afghanistan (1923), Iraq (1924), Iran (1928), Qatar (1952), Niger (1960), Saudi Arabia (1962), Yemen (1962), UAE (1964), Oman (1970) – culminating in Mauritania in 1981 – a country where slavery is still rampant with reports suggesting that between 10 and 20 percent of its population are enslaved.

However, in 2014 Boko Haram which controls parts of the old Sokoto Caliphate in Northern Nigeria announced that it had reintroduced slavery with its leader Abubakar Shekau announcing shortly after it had abducted 270 Christian school girls: “Allah instructed me to sell them…I will carry out his instructions… slavery is allowed in my religion and I shall capture people and make them slaves.” Boko Haram’s reintroduction of slavery was copied a few months later by Islamic State which has now enslaved thousands of Yazidi and Christian women in Syria and Iraq.

This is why it is very disappointing that the UK Anti-Slavery Commissioner’s strategic plan makes absolutely no reference at all to the resurrection of this older form of slavery, but wholly concentrates on more modern forms. Strikingly, it identifies Nigeria as one of the major countries of concern for modern slavery, but only focuses on the south east of the country. That may well be where most of those trafficked to the UK come from, but it ignores the most significant event since the abolition of slavery in Nigeria under British rule – its reintroduction two years ago by Boko Haram. Nor is shari’a based slavery an issue that affects only countries such as Nigeria, Iraq and Syria. In March this year a US based Qatari couple accused of slavery defended themselves in a Texas court by claiming that their actions were permitted by shari’a.

If the UK’s new Prime Minister is as serious as she appears to be about tackling slavery worldwide – then her government must also tackle the spread of shari’a based slavery just as William Wilberforce did.

In January 2015, I was one of the first to report that a massive massacre by Nigerian terror group Boko Haram in Borno State in northwest Nigeria, with reportedly thousands killed. Witnesses on the ground reported that bodies littered the landscape for miles as towns and villages had been burned to the ground, their populations murdered or fled.

And yet as Boko Haram began to ramp up its terror campaign in 2011 and 2012, Hillary Clinton obstructed the official terror designation of the group over the objections of Congress, the FBI, the CIA and the Justice Department.

Why did Hillary Clinton’s State Department drag its feet on the terror designation in the face of near unanimous opposition from the rest of the U.S. government?

A recent series of reports about a close Clinton family confidante and Hillary campaign bundler who profited from Nigeria’s lucrative oil fields and engaged in multiple illegal deals throughout Africa and other donors to the Clinton Global Initiative deeply involved in Nigeria’s corrupt oil industry may provide the answer to that question.

Hillary Clinton’s willful obstruction in the matter is easy to document:

Members of Congress also discovered in 2014 that the Clinton State Department intentionally lied and downplayed the threat from Boko Haram, and worked to kill bills in both the House and the Senate calling for their designation in 2012.

As Reuters reported, the Justice Department’s National Security Division strongly urged the State Department to designate Boko Haram, but thena group of 21 American academics rallied to State Department’s aid bysending a letter to Hillary Clinton strongly arguing against Boko Haram’s designation.

We also now know that the Obama administration was sitting on intelligence obtained as a result of the Bin Laden raid that showed Boko Haram’s direct connection to Al-Qaeda and the international terror network in 2011 and 2012 at the same time Clinton’s State Department was arguing that Boko Haram had no such connections and that it wasn’t a transnational terror threat.

So what was behind Hillary Clinton’s intransigence in designating Boko Haram?

An important two-part investigative series by WORLD Magazine reporters Mindy Belz and J.C. Derrick provides some insight.

What Belz and Derrick discovered was that Hillary Clinton’s obstruction of the Boko Haram designation and the continuing chaos in northern Nigeria – Africa’s largest economy and the 10th largest oil producer in the world – directly benefited Clinton Global Initiative donors and a close Clinton confidante who bundled campaign cash for Hillary.

Perhaps the most prominent Nigerian with ties to the Clintons is Houston-based Kase Lawal. The founder of CAMAC Energy, an oil exploration and energy consortium, Lawal had a long history with Bill Clinton before becoming a “bundler” for Hillary’s 2008 presidential bid, amassing $100,000 in contributions and hosting a fundraiser in his Houston home—a 14-room, 15,264-square-foot mansion. Lawal maxed out donations to Hillary’s 2016 primary campaign, and his wife Eileen donated $50,000—the most allowed—to President Obama’s 2009 inaugural committee.Lawal describes himself as a devout Muslim who began memorizing the Quran at age 3 while attending an Islamic school. “Religion played a very important role in our lives,” he told a reporter in 2006. “Every time you finish a chapter they kill a chicken, and if you finish the whole thing, a goat.”

Today the Houston oil exec—who retired in May as CEO but continues as chairman of the board of CAMAC, now called Erin Energy—tops the list of wealthiest Nigerians living in North America. His firm reports about $2.5 billion in annual revenue, making it one of the top private companies in the United States.

In Africa, Lawal has been at the center of multiple criminal proceedings, even operating as a fugitive. Over the last decade, he faced charges in South Africa over an illegal oil scheme along with charges in Nigeria of illegally pumping and exporting 10 million barrels of oil.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lawal arranged a 2011 plot to purchase 4 tons of gold from a rebel warlord, Bosco Ntaganda, linked to massacres and mass rapes. Ntaganda was on a U.S. sanctions list, meaning anyone doing business with him could face up to 20 years in prison. Lawal contacted Clinton’s State Department, and authorities in Congo released his plane and associates in the plot. He never faced charges in the United States, and he remains a commissioner for the Port Authority of Houston.

Lawal’s energy firm holds lucrative offshore oil licenses in Nigeria, as well as exploration and production licenses in Gambia, Ghana, and Kenya, where he operates in a conflict-ridden area largely controlled by Somalia’s al-Shabab militants.

The firm also has held contracts in Nigeria for crude oil lifting, or transferring oil from its collection point to refineries. Until last year, when newly elected President Muhammadu Buhari began an effort to reform the process, contracting for lifting has been awash in kickbacks, bribes, and illegal activity.

Overland lifting contracts often involve partnership with the North’s past and present governors, including those who serve as quasi-warlords with ties to Boko Haram and other militants.

Lawal’s enterprises have long been rumored to be involved in such deals, as have indigenous oil concerns like Petro Energy and Oando, Nigeria’s largest private oil and gas company, based in Lagos and headed by Adewale Tinubu, another controversial Clinton donor.

In 2014, Oando pledged 1.5 percent of that year’s pre-tax profits and 1 percent of future profits to a Clinton Global Initiative education program. This year, Adewale gained notoriety when the Panama Papers revealed he holds at least 12 shell companies, leading tosuspicion of money laundering, tax evasion, and other corruption.

In 2013 Bill Clinton stood alongside Adewale’s uncle, Bola Tinubu, while attending the dedication of a massive, controversial reclamation project called Eko Atlantic. Critics call Bola Tinubu, leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress party, Nigeria’s “looter in chief.” A Nigerian documentary says that when the billionaire landowner was governor of Lagos State (1999-2007), he funneled huge amounts of state funds—up to 15 percent of annual tax revenues—to a private consulting firm in which he had controlling interest.

In the United States, where he studied and worked in the 1970s and ’80s, Tinubu is still a suspect in connection with a Chicago heroin ring he allegedly operated with his wife and three other family members. In 1993 Tinubu forfeited $460,000 to American authorities, who believe he trafficked drugs and laundered the proceeds.

But wait, there’s more:

Beneath the surface, literally, Boko Haram was making it possible for illicit operators to lay claim to the area for their own purposes, and to pump oil from Nigeria’s underground reserves to Chad. Using 3-D drilling, Chad operators can extract Nigerian oil—without violating Nigerian property rights—to sell on open markets. One benefactor of the arrangement is Ali Modu Sheriff, a leading politician in the North, Borno State governor until 2011, and an alleged sponsor of Boko Haram, who is close friends with longtime Chad President Idriss Déby.The very terrorism that seems to be deterring oil exploration in reality can help illicit extraction, forcing residents to flee and giving cover to under-the-table oil traders. In 2015, a year when overall oil prices dipped 6 percent, Lawal’s Erin Energy stock value skyrocketed 295 percent—the best-performing oil and gas stock in the United States.

Of course, Hillary’s defenders will claim that Clinton obstructing the terrorist designation of what is now the most lethal terrorist organization in the world on behalf of Clinton Foundation donors and close Clinton family confidantes is simply crazy conspiracy talk.

Of course, they said that too about Hillary’s role in the fast-tracking approval of Russia’s acquisition of a large chunk of America’s uranium supply as the Clinton Foundation was taking money from those profiting from the deal.

But Hillary Clinton’s obstruction of the Boko Haram terror designation in the face of FBI, CIA, DOJ and Congressional urging to do so is a documented fact.

The reason for Hillary’s obstruction, which the establishment media has never really pressed Clinton for, remains unanswered.

And yet don’t expect any of the talking heads on tonight’s coverage of Hillary’s DNC convention acceptance speech to press the matter.

Troubling Ties – Under the Clinton State Department, influence from big money donors appeared to thwart efforts to combat Boko Haram—efforts that might have saved thousands of lives

World Magazine explores Clinton’s business ties to Nigerian donors:

While the full truth may never come to light, what’s at issue are long-standing Clinton ties to controversial Nigerian businessmen—billionaires who have donated money toward both Clintons’ presidential campaigns and the Clinton Foundation—who could benefit in seeing Boko Haram proliferate. Knowing whether she placed financial ties and influence peddling ahead of national security interests during that time period is more urgent than ever, now that the former secretary of state could become the commander in chief.

Two years ago today the savage barbarians of Boko Haram, an Islamic jihadist organization, kidnapped 276 Christian schoolgirls in Nigeria.

At the time, this was but the latest example of Boko Haram’s reign of terror. Up to that point, Boko Haram had made it a point to target and slaughter Christians–especially Christian worshippers on Christian Holy Days, such as Christmas, Palm Sunday and Easter.

In fact, Boko Haram is said to be directly responsible for more deaths than the Islamic State (ISIS).

But it wasn’t until they kidnapped these hundreds of schoolgirls that the world was finally awoken to the danger that Boko Haram posed. And, in fact, since then, Boko Haram has officially joined the Islamic State, meaning that the caliphate now controls territory in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Nigeria and has branches and affiliates among some 35 jihadist organizations in as many as 19 nations stretching from the Philippines to west Africa, in addition to supporters and sympathizers across western Europe and in North America.

Despite the fact that the world was awoken to the danger from Boko Haram two years ago today, the world’s response has been feeble, mainly because the so-called leader of the Free World, Barack Obama. doesn’t view Jihad as a global threat, but rather a collection of local, unrelated conflicts in which he doesn’t want to get involved.

Nothing better symbolizes the Obama administration’s cavalier recalcitrance to the threat from Jihad than Michelle Obama’s hashtag Twitter response to the kidnapping of the 276 Christian schoolgirls in Nigeria.

The fact is, it’s so easy to ignore something like this happening in Africa, because no one really cares about Africa all that much. That isn’t just a shame, it’s criminally negligent because the facts point to Boko Haram being part of the global Jihadist movement, not just a local gang of thugs.

Can there be any doubt that were these 276 American, French, British, or even Saudi, schoolgirls, someone would be raining hot lead and hell down on Boko Haram by now?

But we all know that isn’t going to happen because our leaders refuse to recognize that we are in a global war and that the Jihadists have one goal in mind: a worldwide caliphate ruling by Shariah.

The U.S. has been especially slow to recognize the threat posed by Boko Haram in particular. We can thank Hillary Clinton for that. Despite dishonest attempts at revisionist history by Soros-funded Socialist front groups like Think Progress to spin the details, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton blocked efforts to have Boko Haram designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization for more than two years.

She did so because someone had convinced her that doing so might anger the group to the point that they might target Americans. If that reminds you of appeasement in Europe in the 1930s, that’s because it IS just like appeasement in Europe in the 1930s.

In Hillary Clinton’s world, if the Jihadists want to slaughter thousands of Christians in churches in Africa every Christmas and Easter, that’s okay, as long as they don’t attack us.

It is believed to be the first footage they have seen proving their children are still alive.

The video is in the hands of negotiators and the Nigerian government.

The video was probably made in December 2015, CNN reported.

Some of those forced into being so called “jihadi brides” are clamoring to become suicide bombers. A 16-year-old teenager, identified only as Fati, told Britain’s The Express that if girls become suicide bombers they can escape a life of continual rape and potentially be rescued.

“They [the Boko Haram fighters] would ask: ‘Who wants to be a suicide bomber?’” Fati recounted. “The girls would shout: ‘Me, me, me.’ They were fighting to do the suicide bombings.”

“If they give them a suicide bomb” she said, “then maybe they would meet soldiers, tell them: ‘I have a bomb on me’ and they could remove the bomb. They can run away.”

Three quarters of the children used as suicide bombers by Boko Haram since 2012 have been girls, according to UNICEF.

Boko Haram is officially known as the Islamic State in West Africa since pledging allegiance to the self-styled Caliph of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in March 2015.

The massacres in Brussels and Paris are only the latest salvos in a heightening and devastating threat from radical Islamists globally.

They illustrate troubling and much larger trends that the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) has identified in a new analysis based upon its extensive research, sources and multiple databases, including the University of Maryland Global Terrorism Database.

The IPT’s analysis reached the following conclusions:

Islamist attacks in Europe will increase over the next 18 to 24 months.

Jihadists will expand their efforts and focus in South and Southeast Asia.

IPT research found that on average of 3,284 people died in Islamist terror attacks only five years ago. Today, that average is 28,708 per year.

For this report, the IPT separated four time periods between 2001 and 2015, basing them upon similarities in the number and lethality of attacks. From 2001-2006, there was an average of 2,508 fatalities annually, which rose to 3,284 per year from 2007-2011, tripled to 9,537 per year in 2012-2013 and tripled again to 28,708 in the past two years.

The emergence and rapid success enjoyed by ISIS is an obvious cause for the spike. It is responsible for at least 10,780 deaths since 2013, the data show. However, the data highlights that the problem of Islamist terror is worsening beyond the reach of ISIS. The global statistics clarify that tactics employed by the United States and Western allies to counter the Islamist threat are failing and the threat may be much worse than what has been imagined previously.

The growth in terrorist victims corresponds to a wider theater of operations for terror groups. From 2001-2006, the threat was dispersed in area and occurring primarily in 10 countries, including the U.S. and Russia. By 2014-2015, significant Islamist terrorist activity could be found in 18 countries, with most concentrated in Africa and the Middle East.

The IPT analysis demonstrates that many of the new countries are those with which the U.S. has had significant engagement. More than half of all Islamist attacks since 2012 occurred in the failed states of Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen.

Looking ahead, the IPT is pessimistic that the numbers will improve in the short and medium term. They are based on the following critical trends identified in the data.

Trend 1: Islamist Terror Engulfs More Lives

The chart below shows the stunning increase in deaths caused by radical Islamic terror since 2001.

Trend 2: Islamist Terror Shifts Primarily to the Middle East and Africa

The following table identifies the countries where terrorism claimed an average of at least 50 lives per year in a given time frame. The impact of Iraq’s slide into chaos since U.S. forces withdrew is clear. Afghanistan remains a troubled country. The growth of terror groups Boko Haram in Nigeria and al-Shabaab in Somalia is a key source driving the spike in terror deaths in Africa.

In Africa for example, Boko Haram, which translates to “Western education is forbidden,” waged the following attacks in February 2014.

Feb. 11 – 23 people die when Boko Haram torched a village called Konduga.

Feb. 15 – More than 100 people are killed in attacks on the Christian village Izghe. Terrorists targeted the village’s men, going door to door to find them.

Feb. 15 – Another 90 Christians died in a similar attack on the town Gwosa.

Feb. 25 – As many as 50 gunmen storm a government boarding school in Buni Yadi, Yobe State, killing 59 students. Many died inside a locked dormitory that the terrorists set on fire. Others were killed trying to escape.

Trend 3: Africa Becomes a Primary Growth Target

Islamists are consolidating gains and rebuilding capabilities to resume growing again in 2016-2017, especially in Africa.

Terrorism in Africa was largely confined to Algeria in 2001-2006, but it increased to nine countries with significant fatalities in the time period of 2014-2015. The increase will be led primarily by three Islamist organizations.

Boko Haram, an ISIS affiliate based in Nigeria, murdered 7,112 innocents in 2014, up from 1,729 in 2013. Al-Shabaab, an al-Qaida affiliate based in Somalia, murdered 1,782 in 2014, up from 739 in 2013. Al-Qaida in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb killed 873 in 2014, an increase from 370 in 2013.

Trend 4: Western Interventions Inflame Instability

Interventions by the U.S. and/or NATO or other Western coalitions inflamed the threat from Islamists, the IPT analysis finds. The five countries in which the U.S. involved itself militarily – Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Yemen – represent an outsized share of attacks and fatalities.

In 2014-2015, they accounted for 55 percent of all fatalities caused by radical Islamist terror, a statistic that remains nearly unchanged since 2012-2013 due to the overall increase in Islamist terror activity worldwide.

Trend 5: Failed States Breed Islamist Terror

All five countries in the chart above can be considered failed states – those without functioning and effective central governments.

ISIS (responsible for 10,780 deaths since 2013) filled the vacuum in Iraq and Syria created by the lack of governance. Libya became a cesspool of extremism after NATO helped depose dictator Muammar Gaddafi. It was attractive enough that ISIS created a new caliphate along the Mediterranean with an estimated 6,500 fighters. From there, it exports weapons, jihadists and ideology to Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Iran are currently fighting a deadly proxy war in Yemen.

Nigeria (9,207 killed since 2001) and Pakistan (3,175 killed since 2001) do not have failed central governments, but they are unable to extend stability or authority to significant areas within their boundaries.

IPT’s Outlook for 2016-2017

Attacks will continue increasing in 2016-2017 in lethality and geography in the following countries in Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, in addition to Europe. There may be isolated successes against jihadist groups, but there still is no effective, broad-based strategy for containing or defeating them. We are losing this war.

The IPT predicts a dire 2016-2017 based upon its analysis. Until new and effective strategies develop, it offers the following insights into the near future.

The IPT predicts that the following trends will emerge or develop in 2016-2017 and beyond:

1. Europe’s security systems will become more stressed and unable to respond to the rising challenges associated with the mass migration of refugees. Violence in Europe will increase in size and scope as Islamists exploit its nearly unregulated immigration system and Muslim enclaves such as Molenbeek in Brussels become more widespread.

2. The proliferation of terrorism in Africa will proceed unabated.

3. The Middle East will experience growing destabilization in Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia as a result of regional conflicts spilling into their borders.

4. Thailand, the Philippines, India and Bangladesh will become more susceptible to an increase in attacks due to their perception as soft targets.

People might sense that Islamist terror is on the rise as they follow daily news reporting, but they might be shocked at how significantly it has spiraled in lethality and focus in a very short amount of time.

Deaths from jihadist assaults rose from an annual average of roughly 2,500 innocents per year from 2001 to 2006, to an average of 3,300 per year in 2007-2011, to 9,000 per year in 2012-2013 and to an average of more than 28,000 in 2014-2015.

Also, terrorist attacks were once limited to a few countries with no real nexus in the period from 2001 to 2006, suggesting that jihadists were striking targets of opportunity without much coordination or broader strategy.

Today ISIS claims two caliphates – one the size of Indiana in Iraq and Syria and the other along the Mediterranean coast in Libya – from which to expand its genocidal influence in the Middle East and Africa. Large areas of the African continent have also experienced tremendous mass slaughter from Islamist terror in recent years, led by ISIS affiliate Boko Haram.

The analysis confirms that the West has proven itself unable to develop and implement effective strategies to confront, contain and defeat ISIS or any of the 34 terrorist organizations that have pledged their allegiance to it.

The result is that deaths attributable to jihadists have increased by roughly 700 percent since 2011, and ISIS now has two caliphates (Iraq/Syria and Libya) from which it can threaten three continents: Asia, Africa and Europe.

It is a dangerous situation.

The causes are even more frightening. The neighborhoods where the West has most actively been engaged – Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya and Syria – are failed states.

Egypt, another country in which the West involved itself, nearly became a terrorist haven with a government dominated by the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood before the military overthrew it. Even so, it is still attempting to reclaim authority over parts of the Sinai Peninsula from terrorists.

Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Syria each reflected some semblance of statehood by maintaining stability and suppressing violent elements within their borders prior to Western intervention. Afghanistan never had a strong functional administration, and Egypt is slowly reestablishing control over internal areas.

The West has demonstrated an ability to remove regimes relatively easily, but it has been unable to transition these countries toward stable governments that can maintain order and stability within their own borders.

Countries where the West has intervened in domestic affairs now feature three distinctions. They account for more than 55 percent of the total global casualties resulting from jihadist terror. They represent the core of the ISIS caliphates expanding their deadly activities into the rest of the Middle East, Africa and Europe. They are creating millions of refugees and untold suffering in the world today.

Additionally, with the notable exception of Algeria, Africa barely registered on the map of significant Islamist terror activity in 2001. Today, half of the 18 countries with the highest level of fatalities on the globe are located there.

The course of affairs will unfortunately continue to move in the wrong direction because Western leaders appear incapable of doing anything meaningful about it.

Western military and security services discuss their progress against either of the caliphates, but they do not appear willing to commit the short-term resources necessary to completely eradicate them.

They need to recognize the magnitude of the defeat that it is facing and develop bipartisan solutions that will diminish and eliminate the swelling threat.

The attackers are reportedly still hiding out in the villages, making it too dangerous for survivors to return and bury the dead.

“We have corpses littered in the field like a war fought in the Roman Empire by Emperor Nero,” said Steven Enada, a development advocate campaigning against the killing, speaking to Morning Star News.

The slaughter has also left 7,000 Christian villagers displaced.

One survivor said he took the risk of coming to one of the villages with a delegation from the Nigerian president. “Entire villages were burned down completely by Fulani herdsmen. Unidentified corpses of these Christians were discovered, properties were looted by these Fulani invaders. As I speak to you, Fulani herdsmen are living in the deserted villages. I couldn’t believe what my eyes saw,” he said.

“Our people were massacred and houses burned down by the Fulani herdsmen,” said another survivor.

Leaders of the herdsmen said that the killings were in retaliation for the slaughter of 10,000 cows by the Christian farmers, a claim vehemently denied.

However, Emmanuel Ogebe, a human-rights lawyer who was part of a fact-finding mission, said logistically, killing such a large number of cattle would have been physically impossible for the Christian farmers.

“Such a mass slaughter would take weeks, and the skeletal remains of the cows would completely dot the landscape of Agatu, and the stench would permeate the air,” he said.

Rather, Ogebe said he feels the motivation was religious jihad, with extremists planning to take over the villages, as evidenced by the fact that the herdsmen were still occupying the villages.

Andy Obeya, who was part of a relief team that visited the villages along with media and activists, said only Christians and church buildings were destroyed in the attack. “There was not a single burnt mosque, where everything else was razed,” Obeya said.

While corpses were found everywhere, Obeya noted the team observed thousands of live cattle grazing on people’s farms.

Sources report the killings are continuing in the area where survivors fled.

Authorities report at least 22 people were killed and 18 wounded when a female suicide bomber sneaked into the mosque during early morning prayers, detonating a bomb. Another bomber blew herself up outside the mosque as survivors were fleeing.

At least 58 people were killed and many others injured in a double suicide bombing attack on a refugee camp in Nigeria. The camp is in the northeastern town Dikwa, 53 miles outside the capital of Borno state. It was serving as a temporary home for people fleeing the insurgency of the jihadist group Boko Haram.

Reports vary from 58 killed to more than 70, with dozens more reported injured.

Two female suicide bombers entered the camp and detonated their devices in the middle of it. A third was reportedly arrested before she detonated her bomb, after changing her mind.

“The one they arrested alive, she confessed,” Ahmed Satomi, of the State Management Agency, told Al Jazeera. “She feel [sic] that her parents would come and that’s why she refused to detonate her own bomb.”

She reportedly recognized her parents and siblings in the camp and therefore decided not to blow herself up.

The attack was carried out on February 9 but information was slow to filter out due a breakdown in the telephone system. It was carried out in revenge for a Nigerian military operation against Boko Haram in the village of Boboshe, according to TheNew York Times.

Boko Haram is trying to establish a sharia state in northeastern Nigeria and pledged allegiance to the caliphate of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi last year.

In one of their most heinous massacres to date, militants from the radical Islamist Boko Haram group slaughtered over a hundred victims in a village in northeast Nigeria Saturday night, including a number of children whom they burned alive.

The latest atrocity from the jihadi group allied to the Islamic State took place in the village of Dalori, some three miles from Maiduguri, Nigeria. Vice Chairman of a civilian joint task force in Dalori, Modu Kaka, said that at least 100 dead bodies were taken away but that hundreds are still missing.

Witnesses spoke of “scores of bodies” burned and riddled with bullets lying in the streets after the attack Saturday night. One man, who managed to escape by hiding in a tree, said that he could hear the wails of children screaming in the flames.

Residents of the community said the militants stormed into town around 6:20 pm and began their killing spree, which lasted for several hours. During the assault, the jihadis demolished houses and burned livestock once they had pillaged and carried away foodstuffs. Several of the villagers were burnt beyond recognition.

Witnesses reported that the fighters ravaged the settlement for four hours, and that three female suicide bombers blew themselves up among people who were fleeing.

Students at nearby University of Maiduguri heard explosions and gunfire, and many fled the area as the conflict raged.

One political science student named Hauwa Ba’na said: “We are crying in our hostel because the explosions are loud and everyone is panicking.”

A Dalori resident, Mallam Buka, decried the lack of protection from the Nigerian military. “We were helpless. Could you believe that there was no military presence in Dalori? The government didn’t provide security to protect us. I lost 11 people, and 5 of our children are nowhere to be found,” she said.

Another resident by the name of Ibrahim Muhammad said that the Boko Haram insurgents had dressed up as military personnel and began opening fire on everybody. “All our wives and children were brutally killed while they looted and destroyed our livestock,” he said.

Boko Haram terrorists began their Islamist insurgency in Maiduguri in 2009, and during their 6-year uprising have killed some 20,000 people and driven another 2.5 million from their homes.